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The Moon is the only natural satellite of the Earth,[d][7] and the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System. It is the largest natural satellite of a planet in the Solar System relative to the size of its primary,[e] having 27% the diameter and 60% the density of Earth, resulting in 1⁄81 itsmass. The Moon is the second densest satellite after Io, a satellite of Jupiter. The Moon is in synchronous rotation with Earth, always showing the same face with its near side marked by dark volcanic maria that fill between the bright ancient crustal highlands and the prominent impact craters. It is the brightest object in the sky after the Sun, although its surface is actually very dark, with a reflectance similar to that of coal. Its prominence in the sky and its regular cycle of phases have, since ancient times, made the Moon an important cultural influence on language, calendars, art and mythology. The Moon's gravitational influence produces the ocean tides and the minute lengthening of the day. The Moon's current orbital distance, about thirty times the diameter of the Earth, causes it to appear almost the same size in the sky as the Sun, allowing it to cover the Sun nearly precisely in total solar eclipses. This matching of apparent visual size is a coincidence. The Moon's linear distance from the Earth is currently increasing at a rate of 3.82±0.07cm per year, however this rate is not constant.[8] The Moon is thought to have formed nearly 4.5 billion years ago, not long after the Earth. Although there have been several hypotheses for its origin in the past, the current most widely accepted explanation is that the Moon formed from the debris left over after a giant impact between Earth and a Mars-sized body. The Moon is the only celestial body other than Earth on which humans have set foot. The Soviet Union's Luna programme was the first to reach the Moon with unmanned spacecraft in 1959; the United States' NASA Apollo program achieved the only manned missions to...

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...The Moon, of course, has been known since prehistoric times. It is the second brightest object in the sky after the Sun. As the Moon orbits around the Earth once per month, the angle between the Earth, the Moon and the Sun changes; we see this as the cycle of the Moon's phases. The time between successive new moons is 29.5 days (709 hours), slightly different from the Moon's orbital period (measured against the stars) since the Earth moves a significant distance in its orbit around the Sun in that time.
Due to its size and composition, the Moon is sometimes classified as a terrestrial "planet" along with Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.
The Moon was first visited by the Soviet spacecraft Luna 2 in 1959. It is the only extraterrestrial body to have been visited by humans. The first landing was on July 20, 1969 (do you remember where you were?); the last was in December 1972. The Moon is also the only body from which samples have been returned to Earth. In the summer of 1994, the Moon was very extensively mapped by the little spacecraft Clementine and again in 1999 by Lunar Prospector.
The Moon has no atmosphere. But evidence from Clementine suggested that there may be water ice in some deep craters near the Moon's south pole which are permanently shaded. This has now been reinforced by data from Lunar Prospector. There is apparently ice at...

...us with food and oxygen by way of green plants. Directly or indirectly, it provides us with energy to light and heat our homes and power our machines.
For centuries, people dreamed of visiting the Moon. These dreams became a reality in the second half of the 20th century. First, the United States and the Soviet Union sent unmanned spacecraft to the Moon, to photograph its surface and help determine the best sites for landings. Meanwhile, manned spacecraft were being launched into orbits around the Earth, to give people a chance to test equipment and to study the effects of space travel on the human body. Then, building on these successes, the United States developed the Apollo program. Its goal was to fly astronauts around the Moon and land them there. The first Apollo spacecraft to fly to the Moon was Apollo 8, which entered lunar orbit and then returned to Earth in December 1968. After two additional Apollo missions, astronauts were ready to try a lunar landing. Apollo 11 was launched from Cape Kennedy (later renamed Cape Canaveral), Florida, on July 16, 1969. Four days later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made the first footprints on the Moon. There were several more Apollo missions to the Moon during the early 1970s. No one has visited since then, but explorations of the Moon have continued via unmanned spacecraft....

...The Moon is the only natural satellite of Earth. The distance from Earth is about 384,400km with a diameter of 3476km and a mass of 7.35*1022kg. Through history it has had many names: Called Luna by the Romans, Selene and Artemis by the Greeks. And of course, has been known through prehistoric times. It is the second brightest object in the sky after the Sun. Due to its size and composition, the Moon is sometimes classified as a terrestrial "planet" along with Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.<br><br><b>Origin of the Moon</b><br>Before the modern age of space exploration, scientists had three major theories for the origin of the moon: fission from the earth; formation inearth orbit; and formation far from earth. Then, in 1975, having studied moonrocks and close-up pictures of the moon, scientists proposed what has come to be regarded as the most probable of the theories of formation, planetesimalimpact or giant impact theory.<br><br><b>Formation by Fission from the Earth</b><br>The modern version of this theory proposes that the moon was spun off from the earth when the earth was young and rotating rapidly on its axis. This idea gained support partly because the density of the moon is the same as that of the rocks just below the crust, or upper mantle, of the earth. A major difficulty with this theory is that the angular momentum of the earth, in order to achieve rotational...

...﻿Running Head: THE SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES OF THE SUN AND THE MOON
The Similarities and Differences of the Sun and the Moon
Kelsey Linder
Marion Technical College
The Similarities and Differences of the Sun and the Moon
The solar system is one of the very first things that a child will learn about in school. Children will learn why there is night and day, why there are seasons, the different shapes of the moon, and all of that important stuff that is too easily forgotten, as time progresses. But whether one retains the basic knowledge of Earth’s sun and moon or not, the facts (similarities and differences) of these two celestial objects, are still very important. Without these facts, science would not be the same, nor would it have nearly the same amount of innumerable breakthroughs that it has today. To fully understand the similarities of Earth’s sun and moon, one must first be aware of their differences. It is easiest to start with the basics and then build on those basic facts with more details, just how one learned back in elementary, middle and high school.
The sun can basically be described as a yellow, dwarf star and has more mass than all of the planets, asteroids, and moons in the solar system (the Milky Way) combined. The sun is so big, in fact, that it would take about 333,000 Earths to equal the mass of the sun....

...we can survive their extreme climates. Why don’t we travel to something that we can survive on like the moons of our solar system? Currently there are 95 moons in our solar system and still counting. Actually NASA actually plan on visiting some of the moons and sending probes to ones we can’t survive on but maybe can have life on it. There is Triton, the coldest moon of our solar system and largest moon of Neptune. Io, the hottest moon of our solar system, orbits Jupiter. Phobos is actually a very small moon that orbits Mars and has a very low gravity making it cheaper to visit. There is also the moon Titan which is Saturn’s moon and the largest one, and
another moon Europa which orbits Jupiter and has the first ocean that is not on Earth.
Triton, the coldest moon of our solar system, is the biggest moon of Neptune. It actually has some very interesting features; there are ice volcanoes of liquid nitrogen, geysers of boiling nitrogen that are the highest in the solar system and it has an ice sculptured landscape. The lava from the ice volcanoes are just melted ice that creates the moon’s landscape. It also has one twelfths of Earth’s gravitational pull. It is located three billion miles for the sun and its temperature go as low as 400 degrees below zero.
Traveling five hundred million miles...

...EARTH’S MOON
By
8th grade Science Class
Research paper
Earth’s Moon, Luna, is without a doubt one of the most fascinating natural phenomenon. The continuous metamorphosis from new moon to full moon and from waning to waxing crescent can only be explain by the positioning of the moon and its angle in relation to earth’s. Other lunar events such as solar eclipses and lunar eclipses have been mysteries for ages.
Throughout time man has made odd excuses to explain why the moon changes its shape. In Inuit legend, Anningan the moon god fasts while the moon is waning then on a new moon he comes down to hunt. He then returns to the sky then the moon waxes as he eats his game till he is “full”. Then the process repeats itself. The name of the cycle when the moons evident shape changes is identified as moon phases. The separate “faces” of the moon are called, in this order, New Moon, New Crescent, First Quarter, New Gibbous, Full Moon, Old Gibbous, Last Quarter, and Old Crescent.
At the present time we know that moon phases are caused by the angle of the moon in orbit compared to the sun. The New Moon occurs when the moon’s orbit crosses between the earth and the sun. Consequently the sun’s light...

...the diagram. The moon is shown at 8 key stages during its revolution around the earth. The moon phase name is shown alongside the image. The dotted line from the earth to the moon represents your line of sight when looking at the moon. The large moon image shows what you would see at that point in the cycle. For the waning gibbous, third quarter, and waning crescent phases you have to mentally turn yourself upside down when imagining the line of sight. When you do this, you'll "see" that the illuminated portion is on your left, just as you see in the large image.
One important thing to notice is that exactly one half of the moon is always illuminated by the sun. Of course that is perfectly logical, but you need to visualize it in order to understand the phases. At certain times we see both the sunlit portion and the shadowed portion -- and that creates the various moon phase shapes we are all familiar with. Also note that the shadowed part of the moon is invisible to the naked eye; in the diagram above, it is only shown for clarification purposes. Finally, please realize this diagram is only meant to demonstrate how the phases work; the small inner moons in the diagram do not show the fact that the same side of the moon always faces Earth.
So the basic explanation is that the lunar phases are created by changing angles (relative...

...Earth’s Moon
The Earth’s Moon is the most important moon in the solar system in regards to Earth and all of the living things within it. It is also the only Moon that Earth has, whereas other planets, like Mars, have multiple Moons. The Moon is the only other Moon that humans have set foot on, which helped us to understand the formation, internal structure, and history of it. The “moon’s face” is the second brightest thing in the solar system after the Sun, and has a dark surface in actuality. The phases of the moon have been important in the lives and cultures of living things on Earth in language, calendars, art, and mythology. The Moon also affects certain parts of Earth, like ocean tides. It appears almost the same size as the Sun, although the Sun is actually way more enormous than the Moon.
The formation of the Moon has been proposed to come from 30-50 million years after the origin of the Solar System. It starts with the fission of the Moon, which in turn came from the crust of Earth through centrifugal force. This means since Earth spins, gravity captured a pre-formed Moon into the atmosphere of Earth forming the Earth and Moon together in a primordial accretion disk. However this proposed theory does not include depletion of metallic iron, or high angular...